THEME: Negative impacts associated with food consumption (I LOVE FOOD)
TONE: Dark humour
I didn’t want my visuals to be serious hence I adopted dark humour which addresses issues in a light hearted manner yet it embeds a slight twist.
COMPOSITIONS
1. & 2.
It’s difficult for us to place a number on how many animals have been killed for your sinful love of juicy pork buns.
We are too busy plowing through and sinking our teeth in succulent meat that we do not think about what the animal went through before being served on our plates.
“The meat industry is by far the biggest killer of animals around the world. It’s also responsible for relentless, routine cruelty to pigs, sheep, cows, chickens, ducks, geese and other animals who suffer every minute of their short lives. Females are repeatedly forcibly impregnated. Babies are torn away from their mothers, mutilated, kept in filthy and severely crowded conditions and fed a cocktail of drugs and chemicals sometimes causing their bodies to become oversized, resulting in numerous health problems. Then, often when they’re only a few months old, they endure a stressful and terrifying trip to the abattoir, where many are killed while still conscious.”
“IT’S ALWAYS TEA TIME.” ALICE IN WONDERLAND
“It’s always tea time.” to me connotes a sense of gluttony for the tea time is often taken to be a light meal of sinful indulgence where we sink our teeth into soft fluffy chiffon cakes and having buttery cookies melting in our mouths. Instead of portraying this in a pleasant manner, I decided to use this association to touch on our excessive consumption and killing of animals. The girl’s head has been substituted with that of a pig having her meal which is a slab of ham. It is ironic that she is consuming her own meat and hence this makes us ponder about the issue of animal cruelty as if the head of the girl had not been replaced with that of a pig but retained as it is, this visual would have looked perfectly normal. This hence proves further how selfish we are and our negligence towards this issue.
During the group consultation, Joy and my friends said that that the table is too cluttered hence there lacked a focus. I was’t really sure about this as I felt that in order to show gluttony there has to be excessiveness but by having a single slab of meat but by having it scaled up, it actually worked much better than a table full of poultry products. One of the feedback given was that there isn’t a need for the tea set as tea time in this case comes in the form of the poultry products. With their comments in mind, I decided to simplify the composition.
“THAT’LL DO, PIG. THAT’LL DO.” BABE 1995
I thought that this quote implies a tone of plead and would be pretty apt in conveying that idea of desperation. In this composition, the roles are swapped. Pork meatballs are replaced with a kid in fetal position and instead of a human hand holding the ladle it is replaced with that of a trotter. Hmmm, what would happen if the roles are really swapped like this in this composition. Maybe then we will really understand the pain these animals have gone through and cut on our cruel killing.
3.
“SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND” SCARFACE 1983
This composition touches on the idea of excessive and unhealthy consumption of food. The little dolls’ heads are replaces with food that everyone loves, JUNK FOOD!!
To suggest a sense of depth, I decided to introduce repetition and played with scale. The slight spiral and arrangement of the doll’s in ascending scale help to create depth. The hands too help heighten the depth of field.
4.
“I’M GONNA TALK TO SOME FOOD ABOUT THIS.” 30 ROCK 2006
Emotional eating is a form of dependence on food to relieve stress. Heavy dependance can have adverse effects on both out health and emotional states. In this composition, a patient is seeking treatment from food to convey this idea and it too suggests a food therapy.
Was inspired by Jon as he was picking on how I always solve my problems with food. His said that his kidney was hurting and I told him that he was just hungry and offered him sweet potato chips. “My toe hurts. My stomach hurts. I broke my leg. Oh you are just hungry.”
Again, I substituted the doctor’s head with a bowl of ramen. The stethoscope is replaced with chopsticks, the tubing with ramen and chest piece with japanese fish cake. The medical reports are too replaced with menu.
Difficulties:
As I didn’t like the effect bitmap gave, I treated all 4 compositions with threshold. However, with threshold, I had to have several layers and different adjustments as with just a single layer, it eliminated way too many details.
On the flip side, threshold made silk screening much easier as there wasn’t tonal gradations in my competitions and the positive areas are way larger than the lines or ellipses in bitmap. Hence, my print turned out well although some of the really fine lines did not show I am very satisfied with the outcome as it managed to capture the rest of the parts. Wouldn’t have been able to do this without the help of MR OCD DAWIN AND MY FRIENDS!!!
(left my tote bag in hall so I don’t have a photo of it to post. Will post it up soon)
Here it is! So happy with the result!
